contemporary YA – Bookmarked!

I met Mae Coyiuto sometime last year to discuss a project, and we’ve been corresponding on that for some months now when she asked if I would be interested in reviewing her upcoming YA novella. I knew she has been writing since she was very young, but I’ve never actually read any of her work so I told her to go ahead and send me the manuscript.

Set for release later this month (under Anvil Publishing), “The Year We Became Invincible” is about high school senior Camille Li, whose life is planned out to the last detail. She’s a ballerina who plans to major in chemistry, and go on to med school to become a doctor like her dad. But when Camille meets Ian, a “smart ass slacker” and his group of adventure-loving friends, she finds herself doing things she never would have dared to do before, and she starts to reconsider what she wants to do with her life.

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This weekend, I had the privilege of meeting New York Times bestselling author Gayle Forman, who was on her Philippine tour.

Gayle Forman is the author of the critically acclaimed “If I Stay” and its sequel “Where She Went,” and a second duet of novels, “Just One Day” and “Just One Year.”

“If I Stay” features Mia, a seveteen year old with a happy family, the boy of her dreams, and a promising future in music when tragic accident strikes. Mia finds herself caught in the in-between, contemplating the choice between life and death. The story continues in “Where She Went,” told from the point of view of Mia’s boyfriend Adam who grapples with life in the aftermath.

In “Just One Day” good girl Allyson Healey is on the last day of her European tour when she meets Dutch street actor Willem and goes with him on a whirlwind tour of Paris, twenty-four hours that irrevocably change Allyson’s life. The companion novel, “Just One Year” chronicles how their Paris interlude affects Willem in turn.

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